Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Our comparisons are based on publicly available pricing, documentation and user reviews, verified against each vendor’s own pricing page in September 2026.
The short answer
Choose Zapier if you want the largest app library, the shallowest learning curve, and workflows that are mostly “when this happens, do that.” It is the safer default for teams where non-technical people will build and maintain the automations.
Choose Make if your workflows branch, loop, or transform data along the way — and if you want to run meaningful volume without paying meaningful money. Make’s free tier is far more capable, and its visual canvas makes complex logic easier to reason about.
The honest summary: most people asking this question will be fine on either. The decision usually comes down to how complex your workflows are and how much you care about the bill at scale.
Zapier vs Make at a glance
| Feature | Zapier | Make | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | ✗ 100 tasks/mo, two-step only | ✓ 1,000 credits/mo, full builder | Make ✓ |
| Starting price | From $19.99/mo | From $9/mo | Make ✓ |
| Billing unit | Tasks (per action step) | Credits | — |
| App integrations | ✓ Largest library in category | ✓ Large, but smaller | Zapier ✓ |
| Ease of use | ✓ Very easy | ✗ Steeper learning curve | Zapier ✓ |
| Complex logic | ✓ Workable, gets awkward | ✓ Routers, iterators, aggregators | Make ✓ |
| Data transformation | ✓ Basic | ✓ Strong (arrays, JSON) | Make ✓ |
| API access | ✗ Higher tiers only | ✓ From Core | Make ✓ |
| Cost at volume | ✗ Rises steeply | ✓ Stays lower | Make ✓ |
| Best for | Non-technical teams, linear workflows | High volume, branching workflows | — |
Pricing: why you cannot compare the headline numbers
This is where most comparison articles go wrong, including ones published recently. The two platforms no longer bill in comparable units.
Zapier bills in tasks. A task is one successful action your Zap performs. If a Zap has three action steps and runs once, that is three tasks. Triggers do not count.
Make used to bill in operations, and a great deal of the comparison content still online describes it that way. It now bills in credits. The plan tiers are quoted per credit allowance — Core, Pro and Teams are all priced “for 10k credits/mo”, with the price rising as you buy more.
Current list pricing, taken from each vendor’s pricing page:
Zapier
- Free — $0/month, 100 tasks/month, two-step Zaps only
- Professional — from $19.99/month, multi-step Zaps, webhooks, unlimited premium apps
- Team — from $69/month, 25 users, shared workflows and connections, SAML SSO
- Enterprise — contact for pricing
Make
- Free — $0/month, 1,000 credits/month, 15-minute minimum interval between runs
- Core — from $9/month for 10k credits, unlimited active scenarios, minute-level scheduling, API access
- Pro — from $16/month for 10k credits, priority execution, custom variables, full-text log search
- Teams — from $29/month for 10k credits, team roles, shared scenario templates
- Enterprise — custom pricing
Both quote their lowest prices on annual billing; Zapier advertises roughly a third off for paying yearly. Prices also geo-adjust, so what you see may differ from what is quoted here.
What this means practically: a three-step workflow running 500 times a month costs you 1,500 Zapier tasks — already beyond the Free plan and into Professional. The same workflow on Make consumes credits per module run, which on a 10k allowance leaves considerable headroom. For simple, low-volume automations the gap barely matters. For anything running continuously, Make is usually the cheaper platform, and the gap widens as volume grows.
What you actually get on the free plans
The free tiers are not close, and this is the single biggest practical difference for anyone starting out.
Zapier Free gives you 100 tasks a month and restricts you to two-step Zaps — one trigger, one action. That is enough to prove the concept and not much else. Multi-step workflows, the thing most people actually want, require Professional.
Make Free gives you 1,000 credits a month and, crucially, the full visual builder including routers and filters. You can build genuinely branching logic without paying. The catch is a 15-minute minimum interval between scheduled runs, so it is not suitable for anything near-real-time.
If you are evaluating both, this asymmetry matters: you can properly test Make’s real capabilities for free, whereas testing Zapier’s requires a trial or a subscription.
Where Zapier wins
- App coverage. Zapier’s integration library is the largest in the category, and for obscure or newer SaaS tools it is frequently the only one with a native connector.
- Time to first working automation. The linear, form-driven builder means someone non-technical can ship something useful in an afternoon without understanding data structures.
- Handover. If the person who built the automation leaves, a Zap is far easier for the next person to read than a sprawling Make scenario.
- Support on paid plans. Email and live chat from Professional upward.
Where Make wins
- Cost at volume. The difference is not marginal once workflows run continuously.
- Complex logic. Routers, iterators, aggregators and error handlers are first-class. Branching workflows that become awkward in Zapier stay readable on Make’s canvas.
- Data transformation. Make handles arrays, JSON parsing and mapping between mismatched structures far more comfortably.
- Visibility. Seeing the whole scenario laid out spatially makes debugging faster once the workflow passes a handful of steps.
- API access from the entry paid tier rather than higher up the ladder.
How to choose
Skip the feature matrices and answer three questions.
1. Who maintains this in six months? If the answer is “whoever is around,” pick Zapier. Readability compounds. If the answer is you, or someone technical, Make’s power is worth its learning curve.
2. How many steps does your typical workflow have? Two or three, mostly linear — Zapier is fine and faster to build. Branching, conditional, or transforming data between systems — Make will be less painful.
3. How often does it run? A few dozen times a month and cost is irrelevant. Thousands of times, and the unit economics decide it for you.
One practical note: check that both platforms actually connect to your critical tools before committing. Neither is worth choosing on price if it cannot talk to the system you depend on, and connector coverage is the one area where Zapier’s lead is real.
Common questions
Is Make really cheaper than Zapier?
At volume, yes, and usually by a wide margin. At low volume the difference is small enough to ignore. Because the two bill in different units — tasks versus credits — the only reliable way to compare is to model your own workflow: count the action steps, multiply by how often it runs, and price that against each plan.
Can I move my workflows from one to the other?
Not automatically. There is no import path between them, so migrating means rebuilding each workflow by hand. That is a real switching cost and a good reason to model your volume before committing rather than after.
Which is better for a non-technical team?
Zapier, fairly clearly. The linear builder and the larger template library mean fewer decisions and fewer ways to get stuck. Make rewards people who are comfortable thinking about data structures.
Do I need a paid plan to test properly?
On Make, no — the free plan includes routers and filters, so you can build something genuinely representative. On Zapier, effectively yes, because the free plan caps you at two-step Zaps and most real workflows have more steps than that.
Try them
Both have free plans, so the cheapest way to decide is to build your actual workflow in each and see which one you finish faster.
Related comparisons
- Best Automation Tools for Marketing Teams — the wider category, including Pabbly and n8n
- Best Marketing Tools for Business — where automation fits in a full stack